Active/Active Sites is a network of independent processing systems where each system has access to a replicated database giving each system access and usage of shared multiple workloads. In an Active/Active Sites system all requests are load-balanced across all available processing capacity. Where a failure occurs on a system, another system in the network takes its place. Active/Active Sites (i.e., A/A Sites) are designed to provide continuous availability, disaster recovery and cross-region workload balancing for defined Active/Active Sites workloads. Active/Active Sites workloads are currently limited to routable, online transaction processing (OLTP), applications and their data objects. Online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads are comprised of short transactions that perform business operations across one or more database management system (DBMS). ACID properties are preserved across those DBMS. Batch workloads are long running processes comprised of DBMS transactions that modify large amount of data, and which often use storage outside of the DBMS (e.g., files) to record the progress of the process for recovery purposes.
Batch processing is an execution of a series of programs (“jobs”) on a computer without manual intervention. Jobs are set up so they can be run to completion without manual intervention. As such, all input data are preselected through scripts, command-line parameters, or job control language. This is in contrast to “online” or interactive programs which prompt the user for such input. A program utilizes a set of data files as input, processes the data, and produces a set of intermediate and output data files. This operating environment is termed as “batch processing” since the input data are collected into batches of files and are processed in batches by the program. There is currently no Active/Active Sites support for batch workload distribution since batch jobs are typically local to a region. However, since batch workloads can target the same data objects as OLTP workloads, it may be beneficial to consider batch workloads in all planned and unplanned Active/Active Sites workload and/or region switches.